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Space History: Can-do attitude designs can for man

By Michael Shinabery

New Mexico Museum of Space History

Posted:
12/07/2013 05:49:31 PM MST

This is an artist's rendering of an orbiting Mercury capsule. (NASA photo)

Eleven firms competed to design a can.

NASA was just two months old when, on Dec. 11, 1958, "eleven firms submitted proposals for the development of a manned spacecraft," according to "Project Mercury: A Chronology" (NASA/1963). That a rocket-boosted satellite could safely reach space had already been achieved. The previous year, the Soviet Union had put the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, into Earth orbit, followed a month later by Sputnik II which carried the doomed canine Laika. The Space Race was in its infancy, and man would be the next intended passenger. But a passenger in what?

These Mercury capsules are under construction at McDonnell in St. Louis. (NASA photo)

A total of 121 firms had originally submitted proposals for the project that was dubbed "Man in a Can." "Project Mercury" cited the finalists as "AVCO, Chance-Vought, Convair, Douglas, Grumman, Lockheed, Martin, McDonnell, North American, Northrop, and Republic."

In addition, the publication stated that an "incomplete proposal" had come from Winzen Research Laboratories." Winzen was producing the balloons used to lift men aboard the Man High and Excelsior flights.

By month's end, on Dec. 30, 1958, NASA's Space Task Group at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., had "completed the evaluation of industry proposals for design and construction of a manned spacecraft," "Project Mercury" stated. Two weeks later, "NASA completed contract negotiations with McDonnell for the design and development" of the can, officially the Mercury spacecraft.

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"McDonnell Aircraft. of St. Louis, was selected by NASA on Jan. 15, 1959, to develop and manufacture the manned satellite capsule," an undated McDonnell brochure documented. The capsule, "described as looking like a child's toy top," was "more than 6 feet in diameter at the base, stands nine feet tall, and weighs over a ton."

Later that year, on June 19, NASA organized the Mercury Capsule (spacecraft) Coordination Office, and the Capsule Review Board to "review, at regular intervals, action taken by the Capsule Coordination Office," "Project Mercury" documented.

That NASA was calling the craft a capsule irritated astronauts, Tom Wolfe said in "The Right Stuff." "The term as much as declared that the man inside was not a pilot but an experimental animal in a pod. Gradually, everybody began trying to work the term 'spacecraft' into NASA publications and syllabuses."

As an example, an early debate occurred over installing a window. "Pilots had windows in their cockpits," Wolfe said. "That was what it was all about: being a pilot as opposed to a guinea pig."

Early designs incorporated a periscope for "a clear view of the earth below and to provide vital navigational information," said a March 17, 1961, news release from manufacturer Perkin-Elmer Corp. A wide-angle lens that "extends and retracts through the capsule's skin" projected a 130-180 degree view of "an earth area up to about 1,700 nautical miles in diameter." A second lens could magnify any area.

The McDonnell brochure described how "a rigid, fiberglass couch, fitted into the capsule and tailored to the exact contours of the astronaut's body, will safely support the pilot during acceleration." In April 1958, Dr. Maxime Faget and his NASA "associates conceived the idea of using a contour couch to withstand the high G-loads" during launch and re-entry, "Project Mercury" said. In May, Langley's shops fabricated the first "test-model contour couches."

"It was only thanks to a recent invention, the high-speed electronic computer, that Project Mercury was feasible at all," Wolfe said. "Engineers were already devising systems for guiding rockets into space, through the use of computers built into the engines and connected to accelerometers, for monitoring the temperature, pressure, oxygen supply, and other vital conditions of the Mercury capsule and for triggering safety procedures automatically -- meaning they were creating, with computers, systems in which machines could communicate with one another, make decisions, take action, all with tremendous speed and accuracy."

The astronauts, however, who were all military and test pilots, argued for manual control. The McDonnell brochure said "the pilot" would have that "option." That most likely saved John Glenn's life during his 1962 mission, when he endured a fiery re-entry. Sensors were indicating a loose heat shield, and Glenn having control meant the difference between "being a passenger riding a fiery chariot to earth" and "a very busy pilot in full, immediate manual control of his machine," according to "Moon Shot" (Turner/1994).

In his self-titled memoir "John Glenn," the first American to orbit the Earth described how, 90 minutes into the mission, the capsule began drifting. That caused automatic thrusters to repeatedly ignite, which "kept banging the capsule back and forth" and threatened fuel supply. Glenn "oriented the capsule manually" and, during re-entry, he said he "strained against almost eight Gs to keep moving the controller" in order to "damp out the capsule's oscillations."

The "can," with its unique contour and look, carried not only the first American astronauts, but before them the first chimpanzees. HAM, an acronym for Holloman Aero Medical, was the first occupant of a launched Mercury capsule, on Jan. 31, 1961. Subsequently, Alan Shepard piloted the first American manned mission on May 5, 1961. The chimp Enos then preceded Glenn with a two-orbit mission, on Nov. 29, 1961.

There was some early trepidation that anyone, or anything, who strapped into the "can" might end up having it as a coffin. On July 22, 1959, "Project Mercury" said, NASA successfully tested "a boilerplate (mock up) spacecraft with a production version of the escape tower" at the Wallops Island Flight Facility, on Virginia's Eastern Shore. The first unmanned launch, however, was what "Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War" (Knopf/2007) called "a comic fiasco." The Redstone booster "rose a few inches, fell back on the launch ring, and tottered precariously in place. The Mercury capsule's automatic systems, meanwhile, thinking the launch was over, jettisoned the escape tower, which went roaring off in a cloud of smoke."

That capsule eventually flew and helped set the stage for six successful manned missions, two suborbital and six orbital. Extended and enhanced missions, even to the moon, were proposed for Mercury. None materialized, however, and the program concluded in 1963 as America prepared for Gemini, a souped-up, two-man Mercury that paved the way for Apollo and this program's lunar landings.

Michael Shinabery is an education specialist and Humanities Scholar with the New Mexico Museum of Space History. E-mail him at michael.shinabery@state.nm.us. Dave Dooling contributed to this article.

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